Minister admits most graduates are "half-baked" - quantity without quality counts for naught!

Most of the thousands of students churned out of the country's tertiary institutions are half-baked and do not have the requisite industrial skills required of them, Higher and Tertiary Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa admitted in Parliament.

What a criminal waste of humanity; these "half-baked" graduates (for no fault of their own) are no good to society and to themselves. They are nothing but a burden to the nation; they either become Zanu PF thugs or join the MDC herd for being “half-baked” means they are born to follow blindly without ever asking where they are going. Because of their ignorance they will be exploited wherever they go, without doubt their life is just one long nightmare!

In the late 1980s I interviewed some “O” and “A” level graduates for semi-skilled worker positions and I was shocked. When I asked them what is a verb or Pythagoras Theorem the standard answer I got was “We did not do that in School.”  All these students had done 11 or 13 years of formal education with passes in English and Maths whose content had been watered down so much the students learnt nothing but they all had very impressive school certificates!

This week “A” level results came out and there was an impressive 95% pass rate with many schools registering 100% pass rates. I wonder how many of those 95% know what a verb is!

University graduates were no better. I met a First Class Honours UZ graduate of Politics and Administration and she thought Iran was in West Africa! This was at the height of the Iran – Iraq war! She was one of Professor Jonathan Moyo’s students; that says it all, there is no need to say more.   

After independence Mugabe showed a great deal of interest in education, schools sprouted everywhere like mushrooms. This was one of the good things the tyrant has ever done for the country; sadly he did not have the requisite intellect to get it right. He was obsessed about quantity and totally indifferent to quality.

So for the last 35 years the nation has been chaining out hundreds of thousands of all these “O”, “A” level and University graduates who are literate, Zimbabwe boosts of its 91% literacy rate, in that they can read and write their own names and know all there is to know about education with reproduction. There talk of issue condoms to students to reduce the number of students falling pregnant.

Many people in Zimbabwe are malnourished and so many students go to school in an empty stomach and have nothing to eat at school. Instead of providing the students with a bun and half a pint of milk for lunch; oh no, give them one of those three-in-pack condoms. They even have a choice of the flavour they want - banana, strawberry, mango, etc. Of course it is impossible to concentrate on something as abstract as a verb much less what some Greek mathematician dreamt of in his bath when there is the very important decision of what fruit flavour condoms to ask for.

If all the students think about is food and all they do is make love is it any wonder they have very little time and energy left for their homework!

What a waste of human talent; what good are all these "half baked" graduates to society and to themselves other than to become corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF politicians and thugs?!

What is the point of having an impressive “O” level certificate, after 11 years of formal education, but not know stuff one should have learnt in primary school, after 7 years of formal education? We are not fooling anyone but ourselves, with all these hundreds of thousands of graduates, all half-baked and useless!

We need regime change so we can completely overhaul this failed Zanu PF education system designed to mass produce “half-baked”, over-sexed and utterly useless graduates only to throw them on the Mount Everest high mountain of the unemployed! We want any education system that actually teaches students useful stuff they need to improve their own lives and that of society. We must end this criminal waste of our children’s talents and the nation’s future by an education system designed to gratify a tyrant completely obsessed about quantity. After 35 years of this mind-numbing madness, the tyrant has completely failed to grasp the simple and common sense reality that quantity without quality counts for nothing!

Mutasa's court challenge of Mugabe's election rigging will expose the fallacy of Mugabe being infallible!

Zanu PF is rolling out the party’s propaganda machinery to stop Didymus Mutasa going ahead with the Court Challenge of the party’s last year rigged elections. When Margaret Dongo mounted a similar and successful court challenged of the Zanu PF rigged Harare South parliamentary elections in 1995, Mugabe ended with egg on his face. Mugabe will have a lot more than egg on his face if Mutasa’s court challenge was successful too – it will once and once for all that Mugabe is indeed as fallible as any other mortal and political ramifications of that will shake Zimbabwe politics to the core!  

The Mutasa court challenge is turning out to be struggle between reason and truth against the forces of mysticism and dogma; the essence of those fighting for human progress against those fighting to drag mankind back to ages when mankind was not much different from the apes!  

Zimbabwe is in this hell-hole because for the last 35 years the nation has been sold the North Korea “The Great Leader Can Do No Wrong”. It was this mentality that acted as a powerful sedative so many people lived through the Gukurahundi madness with it anything registering in the mind. To them it was a nightmare best forgotten.

By the late 1980s the Zimbabwe’s economy was in trouble and by the mid-1990s it was in the gutter proof that Mugabe’s scientific socialism was not working, instead of delivering “gutsva ruzhinji” mass posterity it was delivering mass poverty. But instead of question the fallacy of the doctrine that Mugabe is infallible on which “The Great Leader Can Do No Wrong” mentality is based people adopted it to suit. The people would not hear of blaming Mugabe; no, it was the incompetent and corrupt ministers round him who were to blame. How convenient, how naively convenient!

It is a well-known fact that Mugabe is a control freak; he wants to be involved in everything and dictating everything. Minister are there to carry out his orders regardless how nonsensical. For example the late Bernard Chidzero, then Minister of Finance, mourned the bloated size of the Army – twice the size of Smith’s Army although there country was no longer fighting a war - and wanted it reduced but was overruled by Mugabe!

Even if one accepted that many of the ministers and official are indeed incompetent and corrupt; it is none other than Mugabe himself who has appointed them to those positions and has retained them in cabinet all these decades. Mugabe has appointed people like Simon Muzenda and Joice Mujuru knowing them to be “simple minded”, as he has himself admitted regarding the later, for his own selfish reasons. Compared to these simpletons he might as well be infallible!

Caitlin Kamba’s article “Nothing amiss on Mugabe's description of Mutasa” in the Bulawayo 24 Opinion column is meant to brainwash the readers and perpetuate this notion that Mugabe is infallible and to question the actions of an infallible leader is per se sheer madness.

Kamba accused Didymus Mutasa of letting his “selfish ambitions and ego overtake national responsibility” and even compared him to Morrison Nyathi who orchestrated the Nyadzonya massacre. What a load of rubbish.

It is Mugabe who rigged Zanu PF’s electoral process to stop Joice Mujuru who had secured the backing of nine out of the ten country’s provinces for the position of VP. In 2013 Mugabe rigged the national elections for exactly the same reason he rigged the Zanu PF election – to gratify his insatiable appetite for political power and wealth.

He has in power for 35 years already and all he has to show for it is a national economic in ruins, unemployment a nauseating 90% plus, 16% or 2 million people now living in abject poverty, etc. On the political front he has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and retain this de facto one-party dictatorship which is itself collapsing. And still he wants to remain president and has attached himself to State House like a binnacle to a rock!

Didymus Mutasa is right to challenge the undemocratic conduct of Zanu PF’s last December elections. The whole Zanu PF propaganda machinery has been rolled out to denounce Mutasa and stop the court challenge because the regime knows that the whole world knows that Mugabe rigged the elections.

There will be more than the egg on Mugabe’s face if the Courts should rule that Zanu PF party procedures were NOT followed in last year’s elections; the ruling will put to bed the fallacy that Mugabe is not just infallible but that he is himself incompetent and corrupt.  Exposing the lie of Mugabe infallibility will be the super solvent to dissolve the superglue with which Mugabe has attached himself to State House. The binnacle will fall off!

Zimbabweans have watched the country go to the dogs these last 35 years but still they have kept faith with the fallacy that Mugabe is infallible. Discrediting and rejecting this farcical “Great Leader” nonsense is a critical first step in our fight to end this Zanu PF tyrannical rule. Accept that Mugabe is just a fallible mortal like everyone else then the need to dismantle this political system that has allowed him to rule the country with an iron fist without democratic accountability becomes self-evident. 

Biti calls GNU 2 to end Zim crisis - the key is understanding the reforms and then implementing them!

Former Finance Minister in the GNU and leader of the breakaway MDC-Renewal, Tendai Biti has called on Zanu PF regime to resign to allow for a technical council to run the country until the next elections in 2018.

Addressing journalists in Harare on Wednesday Biti accused the Zanu PF government of running the country down through unbridled corruption and misrule.

"...We restate that the present government should resign and that the economy is run by the National Transition Technical Council (NTTC)," Biti said.

"The NTTC must immediately work on reviving the economy and supervising the reform agenda, which must create conditions for a credible election that produces a legitimate government in 2018."

Mr Biti follows hot on the heels of MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai’s call for a “convergence conference” to establish a similar body to rescue the country from the economic meltdown.

"However, Zanu PF in its arrogance will clearly not give in to the proposed NTTC,” continued Mr Biti.

"Therefore, the onus is thus on the people of Zimbabwe to free themselves by confronting the Zanu PF dictatorship.

"Zanu PF is not interested in dialogue and in respecting the citizen. Therefore, it is up to the people to use their constitutional rights and confront Zanu PF."

The Tsvangirai group too was sure Zanu PF will ignore their conference and they too proposed that the people should go out in the street and demand change.

"We the political players must just be small players. We can’t lead this process because we have been leading for the past 15 years and we have led people to nowhere," admitted Biti.

Biti should have made the admission at the very start and shut up because all his proposals and Tsvangirai’s counter proposals above are rubbish.

The 2008 to 2013 GNU had clear set goals and had a clearly defined legal framework and yet in the end it accomplished very little economically and nothing at all politically. NTTC Biti is proposing is just another GNU by another name expect that has no legal mandate and Biti expect crippled body to revive the economy and implement all the democratic reforms MDC failed to implement. What a load of bull!

If the people go on the street with the verge list of demands as put forward by Mr Biti and Dr Tsvangirai then they must complain if all they get is a GNU mark 2 and come 2018 Zanu PF will once again rig elections and the country will be back in the political and economic mess it is.

In my view the way forward involves three distinct stages:

1)      The people taking the trouble to understand what are democratic reforms needed for free, fair and credible elections people are talking about; real understood them and not in the usual MDC “Chinja! Chinja” (Change! Change!”) empty sloganeering way.

It is only when the people themselves know what the democratic changes are that they will be competent to elect people competent implement the reforms and to supervise to ensure all the reform are properly implemented.

There is enough material out there for those keen to find out what the reforms are and more will be available on demand.

2)      There is sufficient international good will to help Zimbabwe in making the transition from this Zanu PF dictatorship to a healthy functional democracy by providing the financial package to fund the transition and provide the facilitator to bring together the team Zimbabwe to chart the roadmap out of this mess right up to holding fresh free and fair elections.

The international community has not stepped in so far because there is no point in doing so because the mediocre political leaders and confused electorate who were there throughout the GNU are still there, nothing has changed. The international community is not going to waste their time, money and resources as they did last time funding another GNU to get the same result as in July 2013. The world is going to step in and help Zimbabwe once Zimbabweans themselves have proven that they are now serious about finding a way out of this mess of our own making by carrying out step one above.

3)    Only when a significant number of people understand what democratic changes are all about should people go out in the street to hold peaceful demonstrations demanding the implementation of all the reforms followed by the holding of free and fair elections.

Mugabe and Zanu PF have never denied that none of the democratic reforms were implemented during the GNU and therefore the regime will find it impossible to say no to their implementation if confronted by an electorate that clearly knows what these reforms are. The party will find it impossible to say no if such electoral demand should have regional and international back. 

So in very simple terms what Zimbabwe needs to get out of this political and economic mess created by MDC’s failure to implement the democratic reforms in to have these reforms implemented now as a matter of urgency. To ensure that ALL the reforms are properly implemented this time, the ordinary people must take time out to understand what these reforms are about. It is the people themselves who are holding back change and the ending of the economic meltdown by not doing their homework – understand the reforms, the key to open the door out of this hell-hole! 

"Mugabe is going nowhere," says Kasukuwere - tyrant's time is up, he is going!

“President Mugabe is not going anywhere,” said minister Kasukuwere.

“He is a veteran nationalist and God given leader. Mukuru mukuru hanga haigare pfunde. Please let President Mugabe do his work. That’s what we agreed on the 6^th People Congress.”

People’s congress, my a***e! Mugabe rigged the party’s own electoral process just as he rigged the national elections in 2013! The one thing he has clearly failed to rig is the economic recovery.

His “mega deals” with the Chinese to kick start his ZimAsset recovery plan are falling apart already. The Chinese have come back demanding that the Chinese personal should be appointed in the key government department and parastatal handling the projects they are financing to “stop revenue leakages” according to a Mail and Guardian report. They know about Zimbabwe’s economic waste of money and wealth through mismanagement and corruption and they are clearly developing cold feet over their promise to invest $4 billion in such a leaky system.

The Russians are facing serious economic problems of their own. Last month they went cap in hand to beg for US$ 4 billion to prop up the Russian Ruble which had been falling like a stone compared to other currency. Last week Russian government bonds were downgraded to junk value with a corresponding fall in value of 74%! Obvious the Russians will not be starting the platinum mining project their signed with Mugabe for a long time. They have taken up the offer, the sweeter to the platinum deal, to join in the looting of Zimbabwe’s diamonds in Marange – just another big leak in which Zimbabwe is the poorer for it.

Like it or not, unless Mugabe can rig economic recovery; so far he has failed to do so and now he has clearly run out of options; then he will be forced to step down because the economic meltdown is set to get worse as long as Mugabe and/or Zanu PF remain in power.

The people of Zimbabwe have suffered great economic hardships and there is a limit to what even they with their “legendary resilience”, Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi boasted of, can take. That limit cannot be far off now and once reached the social unrest, after all the decades of bottled up frustration and anger, that result could be a tsunami that no one can stop. Mugabe and his tyrannical thugs will be sweep away like palm leaves in a surf. And the death and destruction it will cause will shock us all and set back the nation for a generation. Surely, that is not what we want!

For the last 35 years it has been Mugabe and Zanu PF alone who have decided who ruled Zimbabwe with all the rest of the people denied any meaningful say. What Mugabe and his cronies like Kasukewere have failed to see is the political system they were imposing on the nation was corrupt and wasteful and therefore doomed to fail. And 35 years it has finally failed; they are just too drunk on power and their egotistic sense of invisibility to notice the game is up.

Yes Minister Kasukuwere, Mugabe reign of terror is over; he is leaving State House whether he likes it or not because the cup is full to overflowing, his time is up! 

I am "not destroying Zanu PF from within but reforming it" says Professor J Moyo - the mischievous Macavity!

Professor Jonathan Moyo set out to explain why he was not the one destroying Zanu PF from within as Mugabe and others have accused him of. He started by denying that he ever said that himself.

"It will be absolutely nonsensical for a person like me to say the best way of destroying Zanu-PF is from within," he said.

"That's a drunkard's statement, it's nonsense. It's a statement that can be said by some village pumpkin that has never come close to a classroom.”

He is such a clever and persuasive speaker with the gift of the gab. “Village pumpkin that has never come close to a classroom”; who can resist such flowery language! It is easy to see why he has left the uninitiated convinced right is wrong and wrong is right.

Of course it is not nonsense that one can destroy any organisation like Zanu PF from within; history is full of stories people who set out to do just that. When Absalom rose against his father King David, was it not one of the King’s agents who masterminded Absalom’s demise from within by giving the upstart the wrong advice?

"I don't need you to tell me the dangers of such a statement. I have never said that and will never, ever, no one will ever find anything like that from records,” continued the Professor. Not even a “village pumpkin” would make such a statement and expect to live what more a cunning fellow like you. So spare us the Tabasco sauce and all the glitz bull; if you are not trying to destroy Zanu PF from within, then what mischief – for mischief it has to be – are you up to?! 

“What I said was that the best way to reform Zanu-PF is from within,” said the Professor. "Now, if your uneducated mind translates reform as destruction, to hell with you. That is not my problem and I want to repeat that very statement that the best way to reform Zanu-PF is from within, come and join us."

The Minister was officiating at the Zimbabwe National Editors' Forum annual general meeting held in Harare and as far as I know there was no stampede to join Zanu PF, until not without understanding what Zanu PF reforms the Minister was talking about.

"We had a congress that reformed Zanu-PF," he said  "We have moved from electing our vice presidents and second secretaries and national chairman to have them appointed by the president so that we can have one centre of power.

"We reformed from multiple centres of power to one centre of power. That is reform. Do you think you can achieve that from outside Zanu-PF?"

For the last 15 years, at least, the nation has been clamouring for democratic change and free, fair and credible elections in which we all have a meaningful vote. Zanu PF itself has become a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship in which all power was concentrated in the hands of one man – Mugabe. Many people believe Zanu PF has become so autocratic it was beyond reforming; it should just be buried politically.

Professor Moyo’s reforms have just taken away the little electoral powers that Zanu PF members still had let and given them to Mugabe. The party members have, on paper at least, the power to elect the party’s first secretary but since no one else has ever dared put challenge Mugabe for the post – Mugabe has seen to it that nobody did – there was never been an votes cast on the matter ever since Mugabe took that post.

Another one of last year’s Zanu PF reforms has allowed Mugabe to force elected provincial chairpersons to be forced out of office in mob-rule type vote-of-no-confidence so that only those supportive of Mugabe’s political agenda were elected into the central committee.

In short, Mugabe has even more tyrannical powers than ever before.

I used to admire Professor Jonathan Moyo from his writings in the Financial Gazette, the pink paper, in the 1980s. I thought him a great intellectual, a thinker, the man destined to leave an indelible mark on in Zimbabwe’s history. He has done that alright but alas not the positive mark I had imagined. 

What I did not know then but know now is that he is not the clever intellectual I thought him to be but just a very articulate demagogue, a devilish imp who would sell his own mother for whatever he can get and be proud he had a mother to sell. In short, he is not a bless to the nation but a curse!

Yes one can now say with confidence, for we now have the benefit of the accumulated volumes of data to prove it, that Professor Jonathan Moyo must be THE MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT of Zimbabwe politic. T S Eliot imagined the character; we have the real flesh and blood, with a soul to be damned, Macavity, the Hidden Paw.

President Mugabe called Professor Moyo the “devil incarnate”, “the weevil” who was “destroying Zanu PF from within”. The tyrant is 100% right and yet he is also 100% wrong; there lies the mystery - the oriental, mesmerising, hypnotic, dazzling, confusing mystic Professor Jonathan Moyo. That is why those who think they know him find to their confusion and horror, as Mugabe did, that they are 100% right and 100% wrong! Of course, that is why he is the Macavity of Zimbabwe politics.

Mugabe was correct to say Moyo is the “devil incarnate”, the man has a calculating devilish mind that the lord of the underworld will be rightly proud of, so the tyrant gets 100% there. When Mugabe got it 100% wrong was in saying Moyo was destroying Zanu PF from within; it was Moyo’s calculating devilish mind that produced the master plan that save Zanu PF from political annihilation in the 2000 and 2002 elections. The Hidden Paw has himself public boosted of how he saved Zanu PF from being politically buried and Mugabe thanked Moyo by appointing him Minister of Information.

When Mugabe once again stood on the edge and looked into the depths of political abyss in the upcoming 2013, he once again turned to Macavity to save him. Although Moyo was the brains behind the failed Tsholotsho palace coup of 2005 to force Mugabe out of power, still Mugabe was prepared to overlook that and get the “devil incarnate” back on his team. Mugabe and Zanu PF “won” the 2013 elections, Moyo got his old job back and the rest is history.

It was at funeral of the late Nathan Shamuyarira’s funeral, himself a former Minister of Information, in July 2014 that Mugabe accused Moyo of being the weevil destroying Zanu PF from within. Mugabe was ranting and fuming against Moyo for allowing the public media journalists to print stories of corruption in high places - Mugabe’s own spokesman, George Charamba was named in the salary scandal at Public Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS). Simpleton like Didymus Mutasa were convinced that Jonathan Moyo was toast hence his offering to apply the Gamatox insecticide on the “weevil”.

Poor Didymus Mutasa he dared cross-swords with the “Mystery Cat”, “the bafflement of Scotland Yard”! He was warned that Moyo will have the last laugh on the gamatox jab and so it has come to pass. In less than six months of Mutasa retrieving the Gamatox from the Museum archives – no one makes this stuff anymore because it killed weevils, rats, everything including humans -  he found himself plastered from head to toe in Gamatox. We all know this was the handwork of Macavity but he will tell he was in Tsholotsho and not Manicaland the scene of the crime!

Moyo met Mugabe two days after the funeral and the two must have kissed and made up, in their own devilish way, because the fire-breathing dragon at the funeral was reduced to a harmless innocent lamb. It is child’s play to guess what happened. Moyo must have reminded our dragon that he has all the details of exactly how the 2013 elections were rigged – after all he is the one who masterminded it – and if any was to happen to him or another stupid outburst about him then those details will be released for the whole world to see.

T S Eliot’s Macavity what never at the scene of the crime, “always has an alibi, and one or two to spare”. Professor Moyo has not bothered with all that and gone for the jugular vein – he has the tyrant by the balls.

Zimbabwe could well have got rid of Mugabe and this Zanu PF dictatorship as far back as 2 000 but that was not to be. Yes Tsvangirai and his MDC fiends’ corrupt and breath-taking incompetence have played their sickening role in this national tragedy. But the single individual who will go down in Zimbabwe history as the “devil incarnate” to have saved Mugabe and Zanu PF from political oblivion and to “reform” the tyrannical regime from bad to worse is Professor Jonathan Moyo, the T S Eliot’s Macavity of Zimbabwe politics.

Bank President offer to end company closure - just a silk purse from a rat's ear solution!

“You cannot make a silk purse out of sow’s ear!” so says the common sense adage. Zimbabweans, out of stubborn stupidity, have been pouring millions of dollars and breaking their backs trying to do just that – make a silk purse out of sow’s ear! No wonder the country is in a total mess, of course, but worst of all is stuck there!

I had first-hand experience of this mentality of make a silk purse from a pig’s ear. In the early 1990s Zimbabwe had its first serious load shedding because ZESA could not supply enough electrical power to meet the demand hence the need to cut off supply to some of the consumers.

That year Angola, the catchment of the Zambezi River, had poor rains and therefore the inflow into Kariba Dam was going to be the lowest in decades. The total amount of power generated from the Dam was therefore going to be the lowest in decades too. Me and a select few other ZESA middle managers who cared enough to be concerned took it upon ourselves to warn senior managers of the situation and recommended that ZESA should start planned and managed load shedding in which customers will be asked to switch boilers in their houses, domestic consumers will be switch off in batches, etc.

The Minister of Energy in his infinite wisdom, we were told, had issued a directive that there was to be no load shedding, ZESA was continue to generate to meet the country’s demand for electrical power. 

So the nation continued to consume electrical power as if everything was normal until water level in Kariba Dam dropped to the level where the operators had no choice but to stop the generators.  One third of the generation capacity was taken off the system at a flick of a switch. The morning Kariba Hydro was first taken off the grid an number of generators at Hwange Power Station and other thermal power stations dotted tripped out on overload and the whole country had no supply for three or four hours.

When power was finally restored whole blocks of consumers were switched off to prevent over loading the system again; the beginning of unplanned, chaotic and wholesale load shedding. Most companies in this day and age require electricity in their production process and so production fall significantly because of ZESA’s load shedding. Switching off whole blocks of consumers without warning, which ZESA was then forced to do because of the force reduced generation at Kariba,  made an very bad situation a lot worse.  What a fcuk up!

So the Minister of Enery’s directive was more like make a silk purse out of a rat’s ear!

Following the countrywide blackout Zimbabwe’s parliament met and, in their infinite wisdom, the politicians issued a directive to ZESA to look into “installing pumps downstream of the generators to pump the used water back into the dam so it would not be wasted”.  Those pumps will need electrical power to operate them and so all the output from Kariba will have to be taken off the grid to supply the pumps. Indeed given the generators losses plus the pump losses, additional power will be required from the system to pump all the water back. Kariba Dam was built to supply the nation with electricity not to use up electricity. This was one directive that was immediately filed straight in the bin with the accompaniment of a loud NXAAA!!

Chaotic load shedding is now a permanent feature in Zimbabwe’s chaotic economy, chaotic politics and chaotic everything! New generation projects that should have come on stream decades ago have yet to start because of political interference and indecision. ZESA management is yet to come up with a well-planned and managed load shedding so the nation can make the most of what it has.

Zimbabwe is in this economic mess because so many Zimbabweans have for years been trying to make silk purses out of rats’ ears, especially when that comes as a directive from the government. After 35 years it is shocking that there are still some people still burning the midnight oil and breaking their backs bend double over a rat’s ear!

Bankers Association of Zimbabwe (BAZ) president Sam Malaba said ailing companies must approach their bankers first for assistance before applying for judicial management.

“Please do not rush for judicial management, talk to us before rushing to the courts. The courts won’t be your salvation,” he said, addressing captains of industry at an economic symposium on Thursday.

“Our solution is not to close your business.”

Here we go again; we are still trying to make an unworkable system work.

Companies have been closing in Zimbabwe because government has repeatedly failed the problems of mismanagement and corruption in the bloated public sector and parastatals which wastefulness has become such a burden too heavy for the private sector to carry.

The root cause of the mismanagement and corruption is the army of MPs, CEO of parastatals like ZESA, etc. who are corrupt and incompetent; they do not have a clue what they are doing. Fire these useless busy bodies! None of them have ever been fired of course because they are the product of the Mugabe’s political patronage system; they are in these positions as their reward for keeping the tyrant and the regime in power.

Mugabe and Zanu PF’s primary goal was back in 1980 and still is today to establish a de facto one-party (Zanu PF) and one-man (Robert Gabriel Mugabe) dictatorship and the political patronage system is the vehicle needed to make that possible. The down side of the system was that it has resulted in the criminal and economically unsustainable waste of human and material resources. But instead of dismantling it Mugabe has dictated, in his infantile wisdom, that we all make the unworkable system work.

Of course Mr Sam Malaba KNOWS mismanagement and corruption are the milestones dragging the Zimbabwe economy into the abyss and forcing companies to close. As president of BAZ he would have heard this said to him a million times in the last year alone. He also knows dismantle the political patronage system behind the criminal waste is a political untouchable and so he is doing his best within the matchbox confines dictated by Mugabe.

As long as the underlying problems of mismanagement and corruption remain, there will be more company closures, regardless of BAZ president Sam Malaba’s promise to stop further closures. Instead of taking the opportunity to remind Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and all the other government of officials who attend the symposium of the desperate need for government to bite the bullet and end the mismanagement and corruption Mr Malaba want to impress the Minister by assuring him he can save company from closures even with the milestones round their necks.

So; drum roll! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr Sam Malaba, the president ZAB, the man who stop further company closures in Zimbabwe regardless of the country doing nothing to end the unsustainable waste of resources due to mismanagement and corruption. Mr Malaba has proven he can make the unworkable work; he has produced the world’s first silk purse from a rat’s ear!

Whatever next!? Sam Malaba could revive the MPs’ perpetual energy generating machine at Kariba Dam and solve all the country’s and world’s energy problems! With people like Mr Malaba still trying to do the impossible after 35 years of trying it is little wonder the country is not just in a mess but has no hope of ever getting out.

Mutasa, kana wadya gudo chidya mombo! (If you eat the baboon eat the fat big male!)

Zanu PF Manicaland province has written to the politburo, the highest decision-making body in the party other than congress (well it would be better to say the highest rubber-stamping body because the party constitution means nothing, it is Mugabe who decide and everyone else follows) to endorse their decision to expel Didymus Mutasa.

I hope Didymus Mutasa is smart enough to know that sometimes the best defence is offence. Politics is a game of chess, the opponent threats to take your Knight counter by threatening to take their Queen. It will be even better if, by threatening their Queen, you also threat their King.

Mutasa has lost his post as Minister after 34 years as Minister of this and Minister of that. He has also lost his seat as politburo member after ever since Zanu PF was born! Being expelled by the province will only mean he is no long an ordinary card-carrying member.

Being kicked out of cabinet and the politburo is equivalent of the bull hippo being driven out of the only remaining pool at the start of drought. He will have nowhere to wallow to escape the fly, biting tsetse flies, the sun and the heat and, to crown it all, there are no lady hippos out here – not even the ugly of the ugly.

“Samuel Udenge, the provincial chairperson, said yesterday that his executive committee would not rescind its decision to have Mutasa expelled from the party, and had already written to the politburo to this effect,” reported the Daily News.

“Mutasa, however dismissed contemptuously the recommendation of his home province to expel him, saying the only Zanu-PF he knew and recognised was the one that existed before the "criminal congress" held in Harare last month.”

Stripping Mutasa of ordinary member status is more like the mud-skippers banishing the bull hippo from the shallows; no wonder Mutasa dismissed the move with contempt, the shallows is home for mud-skippers and not for hippo, not even baby hippos!

Mutasa has lost everything; he must now go for broke, he must make his big check-mate move – challenge the “criminal congress” in Court.

“Kana wadya gudo, chidya mombo!” so says the Shona adage! (If you are forced to eat a baboon then eat the big fat male!) It makes sense; you do not want to eat a skinny sick one with fur falling off like a dog with a skin disease! 

Mnangagwa says Zanu PF is the elephant ignoring barking dog Mutasa - should be a stinging bee!

Acting President Mnangagwa says Mujuru and her supporters should go and stop barking like dogs at Zanu PF, the elephant, that will just ignore the dogs.

“Zanu PF is a very big party, if you are tired just leave. Don’t try to bring some disunity among its rank and file. We want the party to be united in the same way it was during the July 2013 elections,” the acting president said.

“I told you before and let me remind you that here, Zanu PF is like an elephant. Do you know what an elephant does? Whenever it moves around and passes through a home where there are barking dogs, it will just pass through.

“It will ignore the barking dogs until the sound disappears.”

Zanu PF is NOT a very big party; it is big at rigging elections, yes, but that is a totally different kittle of fish. It is over the very issue of rigging elections that Mai Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa and others are complaining about.

Even elephants are known to run away from angry bees because the latter tiny as they are compared to the elephant know that if the sting its ears where the skin is thin the big beast will get the message. The bees only need to sting the elephant once; the next time it hears the bee buzzing it will immediately start flapping the big ears frantically and will be off as quickly as it can.

Mr Mutasa has a strong case here; one does not need to be a constitutional lawyer to see the glaring disregard for fair play in the contact of last year’s Zanu PF electoral process. In 2004 Mugabe changed the party’s constitution to introduce a gender balance requirement in the presidium to justify the appointment of Mai Mujuru VP ahead of Mnangagwa who was set to win the elections. Mugabe once again changed the rules to appoint Mnangagwa VP ahead Mai Mujuru who, this time, had the popular support of the members.

The fact that Mnangagwa did not raise the unconstitutional conduct of the 2004 elections is his business; Mai Mujuru is under no obligation to do the same.

Mugabe with the help of a select few constituting the Joint Operations Command, Mnangagwa is a leading member of this Junta, have turned Zanu PF into a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship. It is in the nature of such tyrants to place themselves above the rule of law and above all the others to be demigods amongst mere mortals, elephants amongst helpless dogs who can do nothing other than bark and make some noise.

Of course the country is in this political and economic mess because Mugabe and JOC have been allowed to assume these super-duper powers to ride roughshod over the ordinary people’s freedoms, human rights and human dignity. The only way for the nation to reclaim the people’s freedoms and rights is by challenging this falsehood that the Mugabe and Junta are a law unto themselves.

Mai Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa and others should stop barking at the elephant and sting it instead; lodge the Court challenge to last year’s Zanu PF rigged electoral process and let us how the Court can ignore the blatant irregularities! The only stopping Mutasa and Mujuru lodging the Court challenge is having played the role of Mugabe’s poodles for all these years it is impossible to be anything else other than toothless poodles!

Defeatist self-fulfilling prophets are once again stopping court challenge of another Mugabe rigged election!

It was Sociologist Robert  K Merton who defined the term Self-fulfilling Prophecy as:

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion - declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.

Zimbabweans have become victims of the self-fulfilling prophecies that:

1.    Mugabe will never hold free, fair and credible elections and therefore it is futile to think there is anything we can do to change that.

2.    When elections are held and lo behold they are not free, fair and credible, regardless how blatant the vote was rigged, it is utterly pointless challenging the results because the courts will throw out the case.

The set goal of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) agreed to by Zimbabwe’s three political parties, Zanu PF led by Mugabe and the two MDC factions led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, and co-signed by South African President Thambo Mbeki in behalf of SADC as the guarantor of the agreement was to ensure Zimbabwe’s next elections would be free, fair and credible. To achieve this set goal the GPA come up with a raft of democratic reforms that the Government of National Unity (GNU) were tasked to implement and to write a new democratic constitution.

The way SADC leaders had again and again reminded the MDC leaders to implement the democratic reforms and literally begged them not to take part in the elections without the reforms, as MDC MP Sipape Nkomo has admitted, shows that SADC believed Zimbabwe would have free and fair election if the reforms are implemented.

“It is common knowledge that Lindiwe Zulu (President Jacob Zuma’s international relations adviser) advised us,” admitted PM Nkomo. “Zuma also advised us and even the Sadc Heads of State meeting in Maputo (Mozambique) also advised not to participate in the elections without electoral, media and security sector reforms, among others.”

So the MDC leaders signed on to the GPA agreeing to implement the reforms but for the next five years of the GNU did absolutely nothing to implement even one reform. Yes they are corrupt; there is no doubt that the $ 4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai and all the trappings of holding high office for the rest of the MDC leadership made them very amenable to Mugabe’s suggestion to do nothing about the reforms.

“MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerera!” [MDC have learnt to enjoy the gravy train spoils without rocking the boat!] Was the pithy retort from one Mugabe crony as to why MDC were not implementing any reforms.

Of course one has to be breathtakingly incompetent not to have foreseen that MDC leaders will not hold on to their political post if Mugabe rigged the elections. Lo behold Mugabe rigged the elections and, yes, many MDC leaders were unceremonious kicked off the gravy train.

Morgan Tsvangirai is luck, at least so far, to have held on to his Highlands bribe. Still he is having a real tough time; it is very hard to keep up a highflier lifestyle befitting that of one living in a $4 million mansion on zero income! Whilst most of the other MDC leaders who political careers came to a sudden stop on 31 July 2013, elections day, had other careers to fall back to Tsvangirai had no such lucky.

Tsvangirai is one of the many MDC leaders who really did not see the vote rigging coming; they are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent, period. For the remaining few like Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, David Coltart and a few others there is a lot more to why they did not get even one reform implemented than being corrupt and incompetent – they never believed implementing the reforms would deliver free, fair and credible elections.   

So we did not have free, fair and credible elections in 2013 because MDC leaders, in their infinite wisdom are prophesised way back in 2008 when the signed the GPA that Mugabe and Zanu PF would never concede to holding such elections and therefore implementing the reforms would be a waste of time so not even one reform was implement – deep breath – lo behold we did not have free, fair and credible elections. The self-fulfilling prophecy, fulfilled!

The 2013 elections were blatantly rigged and I mean blatantly rigged – what could be more blatant than the number of polling station being increased from 2 000 to 9 000, four and half times, just two days before polling; failure to produce the voters roll; etc.; etc. There was no real attempt to challenge the elections results regardless of the mountain of evidence of vote rigging because the prophets did not believed the Courts would consider the case because the judiciary is pro-Zanu PF. So we made the corrupt Judges’ work much easier by pre-judging it ourselves?

Last year Mugabe, once again, blatantly rigged Zanu PF’s own electoral process to elbow Mai Mujuru out of the way and install Mnangagwa as VP. Of course there are grounds for a Court challenge and the fact that some of the Judges will be from the Mujuru faction – given that the purge has divided Zanu PF down the middle - there should be no excuse for taking this to Court, one would think!

"Whether or not their legal argument is sound is quite irrelevant in this politically-charged case which will most likely be decided not on legal merit, but on political considerations," said Zimbabwean lawyer Dewa Mavhinga.

Mr Dewa Mavhinga is not just any lawyer he is the Senior Researcher for Zimbabwe and Southern Africa with the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW). He is not just any run-of-the-mill lawyer, he is a human rights lawyer and, sadly, who does not only believe in the rule of law but is advocating that we too should do the same and not bother going to Court regardless of the mountain of evidence and regardless of the critical importance of the case to not just Zanu PF members but to the whole nation – forcing Mugabe to abide by the law would constitute the greatest political achievement of our time!

HRW should be funding such cases not discouraging them! How is it possible that a reputable organisation like HRW, whose core business is fighting for human rights and rule of law, employs someone who does not even believe in the rule of law! It beggars belief!  

Ever since Zimbabwe’s rigged 2013 national elections, it seems, nothing gives Tsvangirai greater sense of pride and fulfilment than announcing to the world that Mugabe rigged that election! “And it was I, Dr Richard Morgan Tsvangirai, who made it all easy and possible for him to do so!” He might as well add, drumming his chest like a silver-back gorilla!   

Zimbabwe is in deep political and economic trouble because we are a nation of self-defeatists who love indulging in self-defeatist self-fulfilling prophecies and, whilst wallowing in our own self-inflicted misery, shamelessly boast of how all our self-defeatist prophecies have all come true!